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The only excuse for this article is that its author has learned, or is learning, a lesson. He is still learning because he has been violently wrenched from the cozy subjectivity of theory and thrust into the bewildering objectivity of the Holy Spirit's work.

My purpose is to set down a few impressions of a certain parish. They can be only impressions because the Holy Spirit. has a disconcerting way of totally ignoring all our pet theories, so that we cannot measure His actions by any preconceived plan of our own devising.

I would not for a moment disparage the devising of plans and the discussions of ways and means. Indeed it a delightful and stimulating pastime and it is a healthy indication that the Church is not indifferent to her mission. More and more the Church papers are dropping ecclesiological and theological controversy and giving space to proposals for ways and means of increasing the Church's efficiency as the leaven of society. The problem of the city parish; the problem of the rural church; the Church and the young man; the Church and the business man; the Church and the saloon; social service; Sunday school methods; for each of these problems there are many theories, for each theory many defenders and opponents.

All this is encouraging; but from one point of view a little discouraging. One is left in a state of experimental uncertainty. We get to think of the Church no longer as a school of conduct, but a forum for the discussion of ethical problems; no longer a hospital for sinners, but a clinic of sociology; no longer a dispenser of saving Sacraments, but a laboratory of psychology.

Not that we have no right to take the best that sociology, psychology, pedagogy, and all science has to offer; nor do I see how we are to take wisely unless we discuss. And yet one would like to feel that somewhere the Holy Spirit, sacramental grace, and common sense are actually reaping fruits, and that the field is not an experiment station.

In the writer's seminary days he had the usual dreams of an ideal parish, but he was quite sure that his dreams could not be realized apart from some new and rather bold theory. I

shall have to become intimate and confess that I am a ritualist. This tendency, which I defend by calling it a proper regard for worship in the beauty of holiness, is accompanied by a sense of what the Catholic religion can and ought to be doing for society especially for that part of society which we picturesquely regard as "the Poor." My dream parish was to combine these two ideals.

I ask my readers to consider my youth and to ask themselves whether I should be blamed for thinking that these two desirable spiritual fruits are not found combined in America. We have parishes where the services are rendered with "full Catholic ceremonial," and we have other parishes,—“institutional parishes "- where admirable social work is accomplished. But we are supposed to have to look to Saint Alban's, Holborn, or Saint Agatha's, Portsmouth, or Saint Peter's, London Docks, if we want to see the outward expressions of worship and the outward expressions of charity happily combined, and reacting upon one another. Isn't there enough of such talk to influence the impatient and hypercritical young parson?

At any rate, such was my view of the situation when, fresh from the seminary, I got my first curacy at Saint Hilary's, Tuscan Street. Fully conscious of a "mission "I went to my first work. Something no doubt would need awakening. Just what I didn't know, because nobody knew anything about Saint Hilary's except that it was vaguely supposed to be "high."

My first official act at Saint Hilary's was to attend the Monday morning conference. This is a meeting of the rector with six or seven people who seem to have no particular official positions, but who are just interested, entirely dependable, and from whom the rector can get any amount of work. Miss Page has a book from which she reads passages like this:

Flanigan: Man doing well. Mrs. F. has scrub work at Wanacoopers'. Ethel treated at Polyclinic for eyes.

McNulty: Man at hospital. Mrs. McN. behind in rent. Children (6) absent from S. S. account of no shoes.

O'Hanlon: Man drunk. Mrs. O'H.'s asthma bad. Grocery order to be continued. Girl in Confirmation Class.

There are a dozen or fifteen such cases. One of the ladies in the conference undertakes to get shoes for the McNultys, and Sister Agatha is empowered to draw on the conference treasury to continue O'Hanlon's grocery order. The rector gives everybody a list of calls to make, and the conference breaks up.

Now, let me assume that you will want to know how we came to have the Flanigans on our list. We shall trace the history of that family as being typical of a fairly large number in our congregation.

Let us go back about five months, to one of our Friday night Gospel Meetings. About half-past seven the parish hall begins to fill up with all manner of "down and outs," chiefly from the wood-yard, with some passers-by.

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We start with coffee and buns. Then follow Gospel songs, a Scripture reading, and preaching. The theme is sometimes the love of God, always the forgiveness of sins, and often we open up hell under them." Sometimes there is a preacher from the Salvation Army; sometimes from one of the Rescue Missions. After the preaching comes the testimony of some of our men who had found Jesus. (I use this hackneyed phrase without apology, because that which is true needs no apology.) After a hymn or two we tell them about the Sunday services, and urge them to come around and talk things over on Saturday night. Last comes the resolution to a better life, and the Act of Contrition. After the meeting we button-hole the likely ones. Six or seven workers, including the two priests, one or two sisters, always Miss Page, and some of the converts do this.

Here is Flanigan; obviously he has been on an outrageous tear. He has lost his job, and hasn't been near his wife and children for some months. But he seems to be properly sick of things as they are, so we send him to the wood-yard for the night.

On Saturday night several of them take us at our word and come to the church. Among these is Flanigan.

To be sure, he is moved by the hope of a job; indeed that hope

is held out to him quite shamelessly, but he is convinced that his soul needs attending to first. Last night we made things very clear to him; he knows what we are after, and he knows that it corresponds to his needs. He has forgotten how to make a confession, but he is considerably beyond prejudices. There is a certain depth from which the first advance steps in the spiritual life are fairly easy. Sin brings men down to the fundamentals; and this leveling process gets all sorts and conditions. Flanigan may be a wharf-rat or a university man, but in this stage his mental processes are always simple; the center of consciousness is the one glaring fact that he is a sinner. These men have reached a condition wherein they cannot be consoled by the reflection that they are in process of evolving from head-hunting ancestors; and they are too impatient to await the serene process which will develop them, in some remote posterity, from a sot to a superman. No; it is sin that weighs them down, and it is sin that they want to get rid of. And now they have found somebody who will listen to their troubles with professional sympathy. This is precisely what they want, a practical and methodical sympathy which suggests that something definite can be done. If we are quite direct, they assume that we are skillful, and they open their hearts to us as a man tells his "symptoms " to a physician. To be healed, that's what they want. The process makes no matter. The Doctrine of Absolution does not present itself to them as a preposterous claim of sacerdotalism; they are in a condition to clutch madly at the hem of God's garment, and when a promise of forgiveness and cleanness of soul is held out to them they seize the heaven-sent chance. It is a constant surprise to me with what natural ease a nominal Methodist or Baptist or any sort of protestant will, after about fifteen minutes of simple, direct instruction, kneel down and repeat, "I confess to God the Father Almighty, to the whole company of Heaven, and to you my father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, by my fault, by my fault, by my own most grievous fault *" These words

are like the folk-songs of the ages,- made for human hearts and human lips. And when we bid them "go in peace; the

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Lord hath put away thy sins," their smiles and tears make one to thank God that one is a vicar of our Great High Priest Who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

On Sunday Flanigan comes to Mass; he and an encouraging number of those like him, all lined up along the "men's side." On Sunday night we arrange to continue Flanigan's "novitiate" at the wood-yard. He follows our advice about the St. Hilary's Total Abstinence Society and takes the pledge Tuesday night, getting acquainted with some solid and dependable men over many cups of chocolate. He is sure to be in at the Friday night Gospel meeting again, and at Mass next Sunday. For jobs" we keep in touch with two or three big manufacturers who will take anybody; and with one of these Flanigan finds work.

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For a month now he has been to church every Sunday; he has joined the Total Abstinence Society, and has testified two or three times at the Gospel meeting. Sometime ago he graduated from the wood-yard to the St. Hilary's Home for men. We make this Home a definite part of the Church's Penitential System. After Confession and Absolution, when a man sets about to root out deep-seated habits of sin, and begins his long battle against persistent appetites, his greatest help is a Home. To meet this need we have taken quite an ordinary domestic house, and there we have ten or twelve men living in an atmosphere as far removed from that of a boarding house as possible. A man and his wife live there with them for the purpose of making the men feel that they are part of a family. For the first time in years Flanigan knows the wholesome effect of a woman at the table whom he dare not offend, and the solid comfort of an evening at home with his pipe and paper and clean talk.

It was here that he caught the hint of sending for his long abandoned wife and children. That hint developed through the aid of an advance for their railway fares and the first month's rent. These advances the rector manages by calling on the right people. We have a few moderately wealthy people at St. Hilary's whose religion gives them a sense of stewardship.

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